tradition

Post navigation

The Native Youth Cooking Show was co-produced by the Native Youth Enrichment Program and the Big Picture High School at Highline, Washington in 2010. The collective idea of Native Youth, this film was to purposely be a cooking show meant to represent Native culture in cooking shows, addressing an absence of other Native cuisine on cable about world foods, while introducing them to traditional foods, medicines, and teachings. “Thank you” to all the participating members of the Native community, especially the local Puget Sound tribes, for sharing their time, knowledge, energy, and teachings with us!

An extraordinary couple embarks on a journey INTO the heart of AMERICA starting in the water metropolis of Seattle and heading for THE sacred ANCESTORS’ LAND on the arid Navajo Reservation. Showing a dramatic family portrait of a loving grandmother, Helen Yellowman – an enchanting traditional Navajo storyteller who refuses to speak English – and her adult grandson, Angelo Baca – a young academic who commutes between the two worlds, this road trip reveals an unknown America. As both navigate through America’s contradictions, nonetheless celebrating their strong connection to the homeland, it gradually comes to light: the Ancestors’ Lands are being desecrated.

Thank you to the Native Tribal Scholars program for their support and encouragement with filmmaking and education. I hope that I will get to screen this for the NTS students next year or sometime during this school year to bring the story to their community and educate ourselves as well as others. Thank you to all my native family, friends, loved ones, and of course, my Navajo people.

Today, we went over the similarities and differences of the Maxakali Creation story from South America and other oral tradition stories from North America. Students were able to discern similar themes and ideas while looking for differences in content, style, culture, and characters. Also, we discussed “Saint Junior” which is fortuitously aligned with their Film class which is showing Sherman Alexie’s “Smoke Signals” in which they are able to compare his work in both classes along with discussion of themes such as basketball, education, and love.